


Killing Hands

by kwamii



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Eastern Europe??, F/M, Illness, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Nudity, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, and did I mention angst, but as you've never seen them before, like IDK I could tag this as a lot of things, there's also some cheeky kissing content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-22 22:58:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10706910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwamii/pseuds/kwamii
Summary: There are two legends that will give people what they need most, if they are able to seek them out; the wandering ladybug brings fortune, while the black cat of the mountain brings deliverance. They both have something that the other needs. Lives intertwined in parallel, it was surely destined that they meet. One hand gives, and the other hand takes.





	Killing Hands

**Author's Note:**

> This was actually originally part of my [Angst Week collection](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10664433/chapters/23603268) buuuuuuut it ended up pretty long so I've decided to throw it into it's own fic. It's the one I most enjoyed from the whole week (I love AUs) so I guess I also wanted to draw attention to my favourite child?? something like that.
> 
> I've been posting these here a day behind my tumblr ([kwa-mii](http://kwa-mii.tumblr.com), like here but with a cheeky dash), but I'm just going to go for it and sync this last one up, to finish the week on a conclusive note ~
> 
> The setting is tentatively Eastern European, without any real time or place, but I've used Serbian throughout (because one of my friends is and I love how the word 'cat' sounds in that language/her voice). Hopefully it should be fairly evident what these words mean, but I'll gloss them in an endnote just in case. Also Serbian folk costumes are gorgeous.
> 
> AKA. cataclysm is fascinating and I wanted to write about it, except it devolved into an AU without my consent (and I loved every moment)

If one had ventured deep into the untamed forests that swathed the eastern expanse of the landscape, having braved the marshes and the hostile foliage, and made the trek up the foothills of the great border mountains, one would have come across a strange sight. The faces of the crags were not rough and jagged, perpendicular, but instead they bulged. Big, round boulders were stacked up the sides of the cliff face, so that the stone resembled a young pine cone, or perhaps a strange fruit. 

This natural phenomenon, the strange bulbous mountain, puzzled those who could see it from their villages below. Nature had been experimenting when it made this mountain, the young ones said in wonder. The old ones replied that they could have sworn it had looked normal once; in their youth, the mountain had been straight as the back of a military general. It was some evil, they hissed, some curse that pushed at the rock and made it swell like that: _stay away_. You will die if you go up there.

The warnings of old ones were not enough to keep the curious from venturing up the cliffs, but the physical toil needed provided that barrier. One could set off at sunrise and only pass the first foothill by midday - to get to the rounded stone near the peak would take another day's labour, and few cared enough to go that far to prove a few old spinsters wrong.

Those that did make it to the summit believed in the stories of the devil that lived in the mountain, and became a part of that story themselves. Most didn't come back, but the one or two that did would talk about the reaper with his dread hands and dark eyes. How he spoke in a voice of thunder and spread darkness underfoot as he moved. His claws. His snarl. The stench of death and hell.

The secret of the mountain was more simple, yet more complicated than that. Those boulders that protruded from the stone face, gems pressed into the base of a coronet, marked grave after grave after grave. The mountain was crowned with death, and its king was the one they called _Crna Mačka_.

_Crna Mačka_ , killer and servant of the devil (if not the Prince of Darkness himself), would always come out of his cave at sunset to watch the night creep into the burning sky. If you looked hard enough, and if the moon was shining bright enough, you might see his shape; inhuman almost, with an animal's head and long claws. He would linger there for a moment, a singular glint in the gloom, and retreat back into the dark. A trick of the light, sceptics maintained, but the truth was _Crna Mačka_ was no more an illusion than anyone on the ground below.

As the sun staggered from the sky, the figure on the rocks slid down so that he sat on the edge of one of the high cliffs, his feet meeting a cluster of roots. This mountain, barren as it looked within the green forest it presided over, was full of life in unspoken corners, and it pulsed like a secret at its core. Only where he walked was there an absence of life's essence, only where he lingered did the world's heartbeat still. _Crna Mačka_ , though he was a living man himself, carried the burden of death and balled it up into his fists. Human, by biological definition, but the ability to snatch life with a touch of his hand made him the monster that people believed in.

He looked down at his hands, unfamiliar yet repulsively his own. He didn't recognise his own hands, could not view the pale skin beneath and trace his pasts and his futures, for the simple fact that he always had them covered. For disgust and caution, he never took off his gloves. On top, he wore a pair of long, grooved, golden claws with savage points. Monster's claws, and claws that provided the ceremony people expected of their _Crna Mačka_.

People came up that mountain to die, and he let them have their wish. Ungodly thing that he was, some people needed a villain when failed by humankind, and he was glad that somehow, in his great and incomprehensible evil, he could provide some use. His power was ugly, but there was mercy in it. When he saw an animal in pain, or a desperate invalid, he could at least provide an exit, and a gentle hand to soothe their fevered brow. Maybe in this way he could find redemption for that beast that cried and snarled in his depths. 

Sometimes he did wonder if that which he called compassion was only quicksilver cruelty. He had been taught of God, and of Lucifer, and how the devil was a flatterer. Maybe he was this country's new devil, maybe his alternatives only seemed good because that was what the devil did: he made evil seem delicious. _Crna Mačka_ knew life was pure, and there was nothing more so, for he could feel its wonder whenever he snapped its frail chains, and its sanctity was not to be questioned, especially not by one such as he.

Still, he continued dispensing his small kindnesses, never minding the lurch of revulsion in his throat. Heretic. Sinner. Monster. Mortal evil for those below to invoke in their curses.

_Crna Mačka_ still hungered for his humanity, but the distance between them and he was too great - here, in the mountains, far off and up high, it was at its most evident. With a sigh, he turned back into his cave for the night. The end of a day. All he knew was endings.

The darkness he returned to was lit by clusters of flickering candles, balanced on the nooks of stone or grouped at the base of the walls - another form of ambience for his great show. A single skull, a big stone seat, and a rug in the centre. He himself slept in an alcove just beyond his makeshift devil's throne, so small and narrow it was as though he lay in a grave. Apt, perhaps. He had built a firepit as well, on which he had set a great black pot for his meals, which were modest and came twice a day. He chose not to spend much time in the cave if he could help it, and so it was bare and simple and hellishly cold in the winters.

A shadow distubed his darkness, and he whirled around, claws out, "What do you want from _Crna Mačka_?"

There stood, just in the entrance and blotting out the stars, a robed figure. They were dressed in red, with a girdle around the waist and a hood obscuring their face. Faceless and shrouded in flickering flame, they looked like an apparition from hell, but the voice, when it came, was sweet and feminine, "Isn't that obvious? I've come to die."

The voice, amongst its other tender qualities, was young. _Crna Mačka_ narrowed his eyes. He'd seen young people before, begging for release. Naïvely, he had taken them by their word, feeling it was impious to deign to bear judgment on the breadth and depth of their sorrow. But he had once overseen a teenage suicide, just a boy who'd given up, and it hadn't become clear to him until afterwards that life for this one was not ending, but only beginning. The look on his face, the scars he later found, the lovingly packed bag from a mother who assumed her son was travelling to an aunt... the body weighed on him like a sin. He had sworn never again to deprive these people of life - mere melancholy was not enough to justify the evil - and from that point he had decided never to take a story by its words. He needed to see both soul and flesh in anguish. He needed truly forsaken souls with no other way out.

"Come in," he said, and crouched down by his fire, "There should be enough for two. Sit down."

The stranger sat down on the rug, keeping her distance, "I can't say I expected such warm hospitality here."

In spite of himself, he found himself adopting the same gently joking tone, "Don't get ahead of yourself. I'd just put too much water on the boil."

He took a ladle and filled a small wooden cup for her. The liquid was pale, and leaves floated on its surface; she sniffed at it as he passed it to her. He watched her bring it to her mouth, as the brim of the cup slipped under the shadow of her hood, "Careful, it's still hot. I stewed some local plants in there, so it should be a bit more filling than tea."

"It still tastes like tea. Aren't you going to have any?"

"I thought I should look after you first. That's what I'm here for."

"You're here to kill me. Or, at least, I'm here to ask you to."

He looked at her coldly, "I'm here to show you mercy. If you need anything else, don't waste time."

She was silenced by this, and sipped tentatively at the broth. He crossed over to the big, stark, stone seat and sat. He crossed his leg imperiously over the other, and rested his clawed hands on the slabs that provided his throne with arms. Sat above her, his cat's mask illuminated by the candles below that leant it a garish, infernal glow, he hoped to cast that brief, treacherous moment of friendliness behind him. If he was going to play the monster, he was going to commit.

"Who are you?"

"Some people call me _Bubamara_."

He remembered the voices of children: ' _bubamara, bubamara_!', how they used to chase the ladybugs until they landed, and squeal, 'It's on you! Make a wish!'. This _bubamara_ he had heard of too. One dead man, rotting before his eyes, had confessed he had already been to see _Bubamara_ , but she had had nothing for him, other than a bag of coins heavier than any he had ever seen or dreamed of; "This will provide for your family when you're gone." Since she'd had no miracle cure, the man's only remaining option had been to seek _Crna Mačka_ of the mountains. The old man had died that day. 

_Crna Mačka_ thought it fitting that this wandering miracle-maker should adopt the name of a ladybug, that symbol of good fortune. Apparently, she carried with her a bag of lucky charms, into which she would reach for anyone she chanced upon her way, and would bring out that thing they most needed, without knowing their woes. A beautiful gift for their lover, material to plug the leak their roof had sprung, an heirloom once lost. _Bubamara_ had a solution to every problem, even those that were not yet known; one had received paints and gone to make a living from selling their work, having never touched a canvas before. 

Hearing her story, some part of him had romanticised this figure, set her against himself as his foil. He was dark and she was light, and together they could shape the destinies of men. Some day, he had wished to meet her, to judge if she was human or divine. Benevolent and unknowable, that same _Bubamara_ now crouched at his feet, no longer weighed down by her bag of tricks but instead by some great mortal burden.

"Did you not have something in your bag for yourself?"

"It's time for me to set down my bag, _mače_."

'Kitty', she'd called him. The gentle intimacy attempted to cover her terror; yes, there was terror in the admission. What had struck such fear into _Bubamara_ 's soul? "What's your story?"

She twisted her hands in her lap, retracted them into the sleeves of her robe, "The whole thing?"

"The parts that led you here."

"I'm sick," she confessed, "And that's why I've been travelling for years. As soon as I knew, I had to leave. I couldn't stand around and let my parents see me die, and I couldn't run the risk of passing my disease on to them. So I left home, and I hoped I might get better, except I only got worse and worse and I never got the chance to go back. But I did get the chance to help others, and if I just kept moving, I couldn't hurt them, I couldn't doom them to the death that awaits me. I could give them the hope I couldn't have for myself. And that was important to me - and still is important to me. But I'm reaching the point where there is no hope left in me; I have nothing to share. Because I'm sick, and I'm dying, and it hurts to walk, and it hurts to breathe," he noticed now the slight rasp in her voice, how each vowel snagged on her tongue. She took in a breath, slowed down, "And I thought... you'd help me. You would let me go."

Though he could hear something was not right in her body, he had to make sure, "Is there no cure?"

"None. It's one of the most contagious and most deadly illnesses, and it's a miracle I've lived so long."

"I've heard of no such disease," he said, "How can I know you're really dying?"

Without any hesitation, she pulled the girdle from her waist, and her robes fell open, revealing the flesh below. She wore nothing beneath, and he did not have to imagine the extent of wastage to her body. _Bubamara_ was pale and drained of colour, translucent around the ribs, which carved prominent ridges across her torso. She had lost most of the fat around her chest, and that triangle between her legs was barren, while inflamed skin hung from her hips. More troubling than this, tracked across her body were hundreds of billious black marks, and these spots trailed up along her neck, presumably onto her face. Everywhere. Each speck a stab from sickness' knife.

It seemed it was her condition and not her fortune that gave _Bubamara_ her name. Indeed, those plague scars, like the spots on the wings of ladybugs, belied her very misfortune. The irony did not slip him by.

"What about you?" she asked.

The question took him aback, and so did the fact that she made no move to cover up - giving her skin to the air as though it was the last time her pores would breathe it. To die, after all, was her intention, and she seemed determined to follow it through. Feeling he was invading her privacy somehow, he now looked away, "What exactly about me?"

"Your story. I know that, though people call me things like an angel or a good witch, I'm just a human at the end of the day, and I'm furthermore a sceptic. I don't believe them when they say that you're a devil. I think you must just be a very unlucky human, _Mače_. And though you wear that great headress and all that black, I think it's just show. Who are you really? Who is the one they call _Crna Mačka_?"

His face darkened, "No, anyone with this power must be a monster. I'm evil."

"You don't do any evil."

That same moral quandry richocheted through his head, burning at the backs of his eyes. Killing was killing. The selfsame thing, repackaged. He was undeniably, inarguably, a devil in human's clothes. The headdress, the cloak, this was how he made it clear; trust not the appearance of the man, for there is an insidious nature that lurks under it.

When he didn't reply, she shrugged, "It doesn't matter, and I don't care what you are. What's important is that you can end me. For what it's worth, I don't consider it an evil. In fact," he could hear the wry smirk in her voice, "I believe I would be grateful."

_Crna Mačka_ cleared his throat, leaned callously back into his stone chair, "So you're sick. You're dying. You're useless. Why should I end your life for such trivial things?"

"Trivial?" she splutters, "I can't talk to my family anymore and you call it trivial? My mother and father mean the world to me, and living in this one and posing a threat to their life is not something I want to happen. My illness means I cannot connect with those around me anymore, I must be transient and flit from place to place like a restless bug, and that's no life. Life is not worth it when you're alone and have no one to talk to, and every step hurts like a stone in your side, and you can't eat or sleep. My vision is going, and so is my tongue, and I don't want to reach that stage where I have no abilities other than beating blood around my body. I'm turning into a shadow. I can see it happening, every day, and it scares me and I want to beat it somehow, even if that means just beating it to the end goal."

"Death."

"Death."

After this, there is silence. _Crna Mačka_ looked at his hands, thinking. Someone that had brought such joy to those in need should not have to die, not so young. He shouldn't have to be faced with the job of doing it. Life was unfair like that. These injustices were where the devil really played.

_Bubamara_ spoke again, softening, " _Mače_ , if you're not human, then neither am I. You, because your strength transcends mortal barriers. Me, because my life no longer seems mortal. We are both worms, but at least you're useful."

His voice, softer than hers, drew a sigh from the very depths of his chest: "Then are you sure?"

"I wouldn't be here if I wasn't sure."

_Crna Mačka_ alighted from his throne, and stepped towards his victim. A candle blew out as he passed it, an omen of what was to come. It was cold, but _Bubamara_ did not tremble, and instead kept her head down, watching his feet tap, tap, tap towards her, light as a cat's prowl. He stopped some two feet before her, green eyes unblinking and blackened by night.

Here came the bit he hated most, the bit that haunted his fears. He always made it extravagant, for his own piece of mind and for the other's - he needed to detach himself from the scene somehow, and they needed their expectations fulfilled, to go down in a blaze of glory. He had his own ritual for snuffing out lives. He would place one hand, clawed, on their shoulder, and remove the other from its glove, press it to their skin. That mere touch was enough to kill, but nevertheless, he would intone the words with ceremonnial observance: _kataklizma_. And they would die. And all that would remain of them tomorrow would be the boulder rolled over their grave. And that was it. 

He didn't want to kill her, he didn't want to, he didn't want -

"Thank you," she said.

The words stumped him for a moment. Why. When hell incarnate stood above you, poised to draw out the final breath from your lungs, and condemn you to sleep for eternity, you did not thank it. You did not welcome it. It was not right that she should see him as a hero when he had been long cast in the role of defiler. There was nothing else he could be, or do. This was all he knew, and he did not want to be thanked for it, for it was a torment to him. Stone him, hate him, but never thank him.

He chose to ignore her, and he began the observance of his shallow spectacle, prepared his final questions, his blasphemous invocation of a baptism or a mass, "Are you at peace?"

"Yes," she replied.

"Are you sure that this is your chosen fate?"

"Yes," she replied.

He reached out to her, fingers outstretched, claws cupping the air with their cruel glint, and he asked his final question, "Are you truly prepared to die?"

If they were not looking when they answered, he would tip their chin with his claws and search their eyes, and he knew from the look in them if that poor soul was truly honest, or if there was any hesitance that broiled in their irises. The eyes of the truly doomed were still, unflinching, unfathomably dark. Accepting eyes. Martyred eyes. Dead eyes already, becoming deader. The look in their eyes had to be right.

_Bubamara_ gazed down at that clawed hand for a long, long moment. She did not speak. She did not move. She did not look. Her head stayed bowed, her hands remained still. Then, with that voice softer than silk or sin, she whispered, "Adrien?"

And she looked up at him for the first time, and beneath her hood the eyes were right, but the face they were in was wrong, so very wrong, and _Crna Mačka_ felt his heart splinter, wrong, wrong, wrong, familiar and wrong.

His voice cracked. "Marinette?"

Here was his punishment. He had always known he would someday have to atone for his uncountable sins. Every single smear across his soul was being paid for now, in this moment, and the price was the life of his closest, only, friend.

The girl blinked at him, slowly, and tried to speak, "Is it... really you?"

With one small, sad movement, he took the great metal headdress from his eyes, and let her see his face. Adrien had barely changed from when she'd seen him last, with his soft, pale skin and green eyes with their long lashes. Physically without flaw, sharp cheekbones, a slight lilt to the nose, effeminate lips that quivered now at their corners. The only change in his face was the thin bands of scarring across his cheeks, like painful white whiskers. She, in turn, with her small, round features, big blue eyes and a dusting of freckles beneath her eyes. But the disease had crept into her face, and her eyes were hollowing, the pink of her lips turning purple, and a few harsh black spots vying against the bursts of melanin there. Yet she was still beautiful. Always beautiful.

"Look at us," he said, "We've both become legends. I did say you were moulded from and meant for greatness."

"A legend with a sad ending," she muttered, taking his hands in hers. Her finger ran down the length of his palm, and she smiled, "You're still wearing the gloves I made you."

Of course; she had recognised him by his hands. She had made the gloves for him long ago, and though the golden threads had dulled, and the embroidery was coming undone, the design on the aging leather was undeniably from her hand. The small, sweeping signature on the seam was proof.

"Now you know my secret. It wasn't that I was always cold, like I told you, it was..." but his tongue stopped. He couldn't say it. She knew, but he didn't want to admit it, she had never been meant to know.

She respected this, and smiled, "I did think it was strange, you wearing gloves in the summer."

The same memory came to them both, they knew this from the smile they shared. Adrien in the sweltering mainland heat, his trousers rolled up the the knees as he stood in the shallows of the lake, fishing. He was shirtless and sweating, and yet he still wore a pair of thick, awkward gloves, clutching at fish with his hands like a clumsy bear. At last, he got a fish in his hands, but his stiff fingers could not keep their hold, and the fish splashed back into the water. Adrien heard Marinette laugh behind him, turned and blushed sheepishly. She hadn't been there later, when he'd tucked one glove into his waistband, next to his shirt, and tried it with his killing hands. He needed only to scrape scales and the fish would bob up to the surface, dead. Marinette had been very impressed - and surprised - when he'd returned in the evening with a glut of fish wrapped in his shirt. 

Then, the smile slipped from her face, "Why did you leave, Adrien?"

"Your dad got sick, remember? And I loved Tom more than I did my own father, and I was so scared that having me in his house, having death in his house, was making him that way. I felt that he was wasting away because of me. And I didn't want to hurt you, any of you, and so I had to leave. I'm sorry I didn't tell you."

There was ancient frenzy in his eyes; hers were muddled with warmth and upset, "Adrien, he wasn't dying. He got better."

"He got better because I left."

"He got better because it _wasn't that bad_. You know when you're close to death, and my dad quite simply wasn't. He asked for you, you know."

He almost felt reassured by this, and wished he had interpreted the situation better those years ago, so that he had not had to leave the people he loved. But the reminder of the closeness of her death was painful, and his eyes jarred and became distant again.

She noticed this, tried to usher the conversation on, "So your hands, have they always...?"

"Yes. I don't know why. From birth."

When they'd first met, he had been a scared boy, having just discovered the truth of his power. He had wandered for days, dry-mouthed and slightly delusional, desirous of death, hands stuffed into a pair of oven mitts to protect those he may stumble upon. She had seen him as he strayed into her small village, and taken pity. She, the daughter of a baker, brought him the crusts of some fresh bread, and asked him what was wrong. He had not told her, had not even looked at her, but she took him under her wing, and looked after him. She had saved him more than she realised. He had wished in those days, considered, fantasised about ending his life. But she gave him something, small and intimate to live for, and he decided then not to make the effort of dying. He had to live on, to repay her somehow.

And Adrien, at first had hated that. He was a killer, his hands were black with blood, but she treated him like an innocent. He didn't deserve her charity. He didn't deserve those smiles - those pretty, light smiles.

But, despite himself, he had fallen in love with the girl, and her joy. He was terrified of her, uncomfortable around her, but he loved her. Marinette was brave and stubborn - she wouldn't let him go on that first meeting until she was satisfied he'd eaten. And she was compassionate, handed cakes out to her neighbours on festivals and birthdays, always had a kind word to say. She loved her parents, and her friends, and she was beautiful, and she was kind to him. She always tried her best to include him; he who was made separate from others by the lack of his own humanity. She didn't seem to care.

To be fair, she didn't know, he had never let her know. He had always kept his gloves on - until she had given him a newer, handmade pair that had made him cry as he clung to her - and gave her no serious answers to her questions. He made jokes, and he flirted, and he fell in love with her and that was all. It had been so painful; her softness so near yet so distant, knowing he would never be able to run his fingers through her hair or across her skin, to have heaven just beyond a sheet of glass, and the barrier of dishonesty. He could never let himself be serious with her, because he didn't want to reveal anything to her. Not his feelings, not the fact that he was a monster stuffed in human skin.

He told her now about the secrets that had divided them as adolescents; "From birth," he repeated, mustering up the courage to tell her after all these years, "Since my mother died bringing me into the world. That, I know, is fairly and sadly common, but it was my fault. My father, in his grief and confusion - he didn't know if he could love the life that his wife had exchanged for her own - and so, fortunately for him, he didn't want to touch me. It was a home birth, and there was nowhere else to do it but on the floor. And I was crying, apparently, in all this blood, and the cat came along, smelling innards, and I reached out to this poor animal, and as soon as I touched it, it died too. And then my dad knew. My hands are made for death, and death alone."

"Is that why you call yourself _Crna Mačka_ now?"

"It sounds odd when you link the two out loud," he said with a chuckle, "'I killed my cat so I'll become one in memoriam'. But yes. I adopted the guise of a black cat since all I seem to bring is misfortune."

She shot him a look, " _Adrien_."

"Too self-deprecating?"

"A bit," she winced, "Does that explain the scars as well?"

He nodded. The first person who had come to him seeking their death had scratched his cheek as they'd fallen, drawing a thin line of blood out through his flesh. Somehow, it had shocked him to see his bright red mortality. A few drops of his blood seemed a good exchange; or at least, it was a start. Every killing after that, and he drew another line through his cheeks, until the scars were layered up like the whiskers they now resembled. He decided, given Marinette's tone, it wasn't the best time to tell her they were self-inflicted, though her query suggested that she'd guessed.

She, luckily, had other questions, "And what made you come to us?"

"When my father told me. You know, he didn't know what to do with me at first, but I think a seed of an idea entered his mind then. I was raised with my hands tied behind my back. My father never embraced me, or otherwise touched me. But then he started taking me to meet people, and I started realising that our house was becoming nicer. Less barren. It turned out my dad had been using me to get rid of others and earn money that way. I left home as soon as I put it all together. As soon as he gave me answers."

She frowned at him, pressed his hand tighter into his, "That's terrible, Adrien, but you shouldn't carry the guilt of that with you. You were innocent of what was happening. You were being used. It has nothing to do with you."

"But still, it's a terrible power to have. I'm a terrible person for having it."

"Never. All those years I knew you, I never saw anything bad from you. Even now, what you're doing is so merciful. There's compassion in you for certain, and I honestly think no one could wield this dread power with the sort of resposibility you exhibit. I'm impressed, and I'm proud, and..." she sighed, the air rupturing and becoming a cough half way, "And I'm glad I saw you again before I died, Adrien."

These words meant much to him, and he had to blink away tears. Maybe he wasn't that bad. Maybe there was still hope for him. She, _Bubamara_ , could bring hope even to him, a soul doomed to the deepest depths of hell. Her words gave him hope, and he shuffled closer to her, placed her claws tenderly on her cheek, "You know, Marinette, you don't have to die."

"I do. I must."

"You can stay here, with me. No one will get sick, and I'll look after you for as long as I can. We have so much to catch up on, you know, and it's simply not your time yet."

She shook her head, showed to him again the stubbornness that he so admired, "It is. It has to be. I can feel my life fading. I don't think I can linger here, not so far from the people I know."

Adrien felt a pang at her casual exclusion of him from 'people'; for all she'd argued of his humanity, ultimately she denied him it. It had been presumptuous of him to think that they might live together, as humans and as equals.

"So you're still adamant?

She nodded, not looking at him now, "I'm sorry, I don't know how I can live like this."

He stared beyond the curve of her hood, at the night sky. It was so black beyond, and the same blackness pervaded his heart. He couldn't kill her. He couldn't kill his best friend, the only person he had ever loved. But she needed him to, and he owed her, and it seemed apt somehow that she had given him life, and now he was tasked with taking hers. 

"I'll ask you again. Are you sure?"

"Please."

He gulped down his fear and wretchedness, "If I do that for you, will you do something for me?"

"Of course."

"Can I kiss you, Marinette?"

She stared at him, that same expression on her face from when she recognised him before. Then, with a small breath fanning across his face, delicious air once bound to her cells, "I'd always wanted to."

"And so had I."

She was the one to initiate it, pulling him in for their first and last kiss. Her fevered skin was still soft and dreamlike, like his most intimate imaginings, and he pushed in deeper, lapping up the air from her lips. His mouth pushed against hers, their noses bashed, and they fell into the kiss with years of latent regrets.

Marinette drew away, her eyelashes stroking his cheek, "That's a nice final memory, Adrien, _mače_."

"Don't talk," he said, and leaned in again, his knees clacking against hers as he shuffled to press his body closer.

Their lips met, and her hands went up to his face, tracing the whiskery scars there, thumbs rolling over the tips of his ears, and he near purred at this new unfamiliar intimacy, wedging his body tighter to hers. His hands, gloved and clawed, went to her waist, under her robe. As the golden tips skimmed her spine, she shivered, lips breaking from his for a moment before he recaptured them. He let his hands wander where he had always dreamed to, venerating the body of this angel, this earthly salvation. 

He had wanted this, but not just to satisfy the ghosts of his past, but to satisfy that first, original wish. Death. He wanted death, and he wanted Marinette, and in her kiss, he could have both. He could absorb the memory of her into his skin, as well as the sickness she carried; infectious and fatal. His skin would blacken like his soul and he would follow her down to her death. He'd served his purpose and now he needed to rot. He needed and wanted to ache the way she did, feel his faculties crumble, become the beast he was meant to be, abandon all trace of his person and live with the worms. It was what _Crna Mačka_ deserved, what Adrien desired. Death. Death in Marinette, and Marinette in death.

Meanwhile, Marinette, innocent Marinette, was kissing him with fervour. He savoured the taste of her, the memory of her. He fixed a clawed hand at the base of her neck, pushing their mouths closer, and their teeth clashed, but she didn't mind, because she kept kissing him, and if she noticed he was crying, she didn't mention it. His hands became frantic. 

Let him have the last of her. Let him take off his gloves and finally touch her properly. Let him finally bring the deliverance she craved.

Let him mutter into her mouth the final, unnecessary words as their skin collides: " _Kataklisma_ "

And let her ardent breath still upon his lips and melt beneath his tears.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Crna Mačka** \- black cat  
>  **Mače** \- kitty  
>  **Bubamara** \- ladybug  
>  **Kataklisma** \- cataclysm


End file.
